Walking the Epistemic Tightrope: Autism, Participation and Knowledge Exchange in Cuba

This paper examines a disability knowledge exchange project between the UK and Cuba through the lens of epistemic justice, exploring how participation, knowledge, and emancipation are differently constructed across contexts. Drawing on critical disability studies and critical autism studies, it interrogates dominant Global North models of participation, which are often individualised, procedural, and centred on consultation, in contrast to Cuban approaches that are more deeply embedded within collective structures, disabled people’s organisations, and longstanding traditions of grassroots mobilisation. Rather than framing these differences as a deficit, the paper highlights the strengths of Cuban participatory practice, particularly its capacity to sustain collective leadership and social inclusion under conditions of material constraint. The paper identifies an “epistemic tightrope” encountered in working within the Cuban context, which differed from previous experiences of decolonial collaboration elsewhere. UK partners were frequently positioned as contributors of neurodiversity-informed knowledge, while Cuban partners held significant forms of practical, embodied, and organisational expertise that were not always explicitly recognised as knowledge. These dynamics reveal how epistemic injustice operates within cross-cultural collaboration, shaping whose knowledge is made visible, whose frameworks are privileged, and whose expertise is required to adapt. Autism and sensory practice emerged as key sites for negotiating these tensions. Sensory environments sit at the intersection of individual and collective experience, making them a powerful means of rethinking participation. Through collaborative sensory practices, the project moves beyond abstract notions of inclusion towards the co-creation of environments that support diverse forms of engagement, wellbeing, and belonging. The paper argues that sensory practice not only disrupts hierarchies of knowledge but also enables more epistemically just forms of participation, bridging Global North and Global South perspectives, individual and collective experience, and diverse ways of knowing.